a sincere apology

To all the people that we spoke to today and failed to help. I am sorry that we could not find your people, that no one answered your intercom page, that you heard they were here or you saw them on cnn and then we could not find them. I am so sorry. There is no way to fix it when we fail. The next people might not drop the ball, the dice might roll your way, please keep trying and keep telling your stories.

I will tell two stories, one of a police officer who was stationed near me for much of the day and he would be mostly sitting at a table watching everything going on, with maybe another cop and with a woman in the yellow reliant ctr. shirt. Sometimes I sent people to him or asked him a question and sometimes he asked me. and very near the end of the day I went to tell him something spontaneously, some new information. And he said, You know, I am surprised. I did not realize. I thought people would care more about their home and things, but now i realize after your basic needs, after you have water and food, you don't care about anything else, you want to know where your people are and that they're okay. nothing else matters much. You can get all that back someday, somehow. He had the look of a man who had just had a religious enlightenment. "Food, water, shelter, information." "It's so strange!" he said, looking at me like he had slowly pondered why we bothered to have computers and then reluctantly got it.

The other story is of the cab driver who toook me home. James and the other guys begged me to stay and do that station till 9pm so i said yes but I'm missing my ride, and they said they'd pay my cab. (like 70 bucks) Or I could stay in their hotel. Maybe tomorrow... The cab driver, Michael, was a philosopher. and a skilled orator. He took a look at me and said, you have been working hard, and when you are working so hard, like that you cant stop. You look around you and you can't stop. You should ahve seen it the first three days with the smell, when people smelled, when people see a bottle of water and they run, when people are begging and I went running to find food for this lady's little boy who was dying, just limp, and he eat it, and I stayed with him... and oh man, aftert that jI can't go off my shift and go back to drive my cab! No way! No Way! And you go back to your bed, in your room ,a nd you cry because it's so comfortable and they're starving and you get, I got 3 hours sleep those first 3 nights. And I'm still crying but I said I won't cry anymore. I have to be happy and create my happiness and create my life to happen. They're saying 72% want to impeach bush! (we talk politics) And I, I know that I love my enemies in Nigeria, because my enemeis make me smart, they teach me, the push me, when they jealous me, it just push me forward. When they jealous me, it makdes me work hard and harder until my enemy can't stand it because i iam happy and creatiing, I am creating happiness. There could be nothing, or unhappiness, but because I work to create happiness, my enemies are destroyed, they jelous so much they commit suicide. the pressure make me resiliant. I say, "I worked hard because i knew that everyon around me would be ashamed if they didn't work as hard. So, that pushed me to work harder to get more out of them. It is a burden of leading. " "You are right madam. You are absolutely right. And your enemies will fold up, they will shrivel to nothing, because of your work, your hard hard work. And like this, this is how Clinton is happy. And Bush, he is not a happy man. He has to work hard, to have an idea or a vision , and he does not doing these things. When I first come to this Houston it is ugly, the boys spray salt and pepper in my face in some kind of poison and saying dirty nigger and I was blind. And the fireman came and said oh this is bad. This is bad, bad, bad. And they saved me. Now Houston is different years later beacuse everyone got too tired of being afraid. Their life is good. What for why to be always afraid, to be boiling hot all the time? Relax! And then their life is good. They are working to make the city very beautiful and to say, we are loving the foreigners! Come, come in! And I can work to make it happen what I want, like magic. And then my enemies die back home in Nigeria from jealous. Because I have resilience, which means, I have flexiblity. I can come back. Because I know how to live creative that way.

In the tv now they say very blunt, they say we not going to bury any corpses, swelling up like dogs, floating dogs, bodies, very ugly everywhere, and you have to see. And Oprah come with NO MAKEUP on, with no make up and she's not pretty, oh! i thought she was so pretty, but only with the makeup! and she says let me in, and they no, no you don't want to see. And she says please, Please! let me in to see and they say, no, you will feel too bad, you don't want to see, you don't want to see. And a third time she goes to see and Oh! Please Let me See! and they said well okay come on then, come with us. and she was crying and crying in her eyes because she saw everything about the bodies and the dogs eating them. And they said we will not bury these bodies until Bush will see.

"He'll be a war criminial before an international court."

"You have said it. You have said it! Madam, you are absolutely correct. You cannot allow a corrupt dictatorship to rule your country. "

Comments

[Ms. Jane]

Stay strong Badger. You're making a difference.

[GraceD]

Rainbow arm warmers
Badger puts out style and flash
The Astrodome glows

[savtadotty]

You are making lemonade from some humongous lemons! And so is your taxi driver. And so are all the volunteers you are wrangling into a coherent unit. Bravo, badgerbag!

[badgerbag]

Wow, I just re-read this. Michael the taxi driver is a genius. Thanks Michael because reading your words again just now gave me a lot of strength.